


Weightless

by lavenderteaspoons



Series: Tales from The Day of Story and Song [1]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Campaign: Balance (The Adventure Zone), Comfort, Deep Thinking, Emotional, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Support, F/M, Feels, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I want to sleep, Insomnia, Love, No Beta, TAZ Balance, We Die Like Men, Working Out My Feelings Through Fic, barry can help, cathartic for me, don't read if sad, let lup sleep dammit, lup is sad, maybe for you, not really - Freeform, read responsibly, self care is important, spoilers?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:48:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25625440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavenderteaspoons/pseuds/lavenderteaspoons
Summary: She opens her eyes. Right now she feels loose, like if she doesn't keep herself grounded to the mattress beneath her and the man behind her, she’ll float up into the ceiling and lose it all. She’ll lose everything again, and she’ll have to start from scratch. Her heart can’t take another reset. She takes another breath.
Relationships: Barry Bluejeans/Lup
Series: Tales from The Day of Story and Song [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1857547
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	Weightless

Lup stares at the ceiling of her room in the small cottage in Goldcliff. The small cottage that Magnus and Barry had worked so hard to build over the summer that followed the Day of Story and Song. The small cottage that held so many things that made her happy, so many things that she loved. The small cottage where she felt loved.

The patch of ceiling her eyes fix on is covered in glow in the dark stars, carefully placed by both Lup and Barry to resemble the galaxies of their favorite Cycles. They haven’t been activated in several hours, so their glow is faint, but for her elven eyes it’s easy to see where one of the stars is peeling at it’s edge. She looks at a different patch of ceiling so she doesn’t get up to fix it, and focuses on the chiffon fabric that drapes around their bed. She follows the smooth flowing curve of the material down to the end of the bed, where the windows drop shadows of moonlight over their legs.

It’s probably almost 3:00 in the morning, based on the moonlight shining from the west window. Barry’s curled up just behind her, his fingers brushing against her shoulder blades as she breathes. His breathing is deep and even, and he smells like aftershave and toothpaste and ash. Barry is here, she reminds herself. Barry is here, and I’m here, and we’re here. She wants to hold his hand, kiss his cheek and tell herself everything will be okay, but he’s asleep, and humans need sleep.

She takes another deep breath, and closes her eyes. She counts to ten, twenty, until she’s reached almost one hundred and fifty three, and her skin is buzzing and her ears flick back and forth with every new cricket outside, every rustle of movement, every tick from the grandfather clock in the hallway. She’s always wanted one, but she regrets sticking it so close to their bedroom. When it’s late like this, she can hear it. It ticks, counting down the seconds until the next moment she has to be ready, has to be awake and moving and prepared to fight.

Because the fighting doesn’t stop. The fighting never stops, never will and never has. The past nine months of healing and waiting and loving, they have to end at some point, right? Lup has been fighting since day one of her very existence, fighting to stay alive, fighting to keep her brother alive, to keep her lover alive, to keep her family.

And now that she has, now that she’s secured everything in her life down with strong pieces of metaphysical rope and has good assurity in their safety, Lup doesn’t know what to do. Her time is endless now, days filled with trivial tasks like eating and taking walks, practicing magic with Taako and Angus, and feeling lost. She can’t figure it out, and the longer she spends trying to figure it out, the less time she spends taking care of herself.

Lup hasn’t slept in two weeks. Elves don’t need much sleep, but she hasn’t had any. Meditation hasn’t been great either. She closes her eyes, tries to imagine the grassy field of a meadow, the figurative wind and calm, and instead finds herself gripping the grass hard enough to tear, and fighting back against winds that should be akin to gentle breezes.

She opens her eyes. Right now she feels loose, like if she doesn't keep herself grounded to the mattress beneath her and the man behind her, she’ll float up into the ceiling and lose it all. She’ll lose everything again, and she’ll have to start from scratch. Her heart can’t take another reset. She takes another breath.

Another breath, and another, and she stares at the ceiling, at the strung lights and paper garlands and beads and jewels that Barry lets her hang all over the cottage. Small things to help her ground herself when she feels weightless, small things that make her smile with youthful glee when they shine in the light. Lup focuses on these, taking deep breaths. And she waits. Waits for her body to relax, for her mind to stop running in circles, for her constant existence to perhaps finally end.

When it doesn’t end, and she can’t relax, and she’s still thinking about all of the what-ifs that could have happened, that should have happened, Lup feels hot in her chest and behind her eyes.

Lup sits up, or she tries to. As she moves to prop herself up, Barry shifts his arm around her waist and tugs her hard against him. She cranes around to look at him, to see his deep blue eyes blink open behind her. His face is relaxed save for his brows, which pinch a little in the middle. She wants to kiss it away, to make sure he never has to worry about her again. But they’ve had that conversation, and she knows there’s nothing she can do that will make him stop worrying about her.

“Hey,” his voice is raspy with sleep, his eyes squinting in the dark.

“Go back to sleep,” she whispers. Barry shakes his head, presses a kiss to her bare shoulder.

“Not without you,” he says, and Lup feels her stomach twist up tightly against her sternum, feels a stinging burning behind her nose, and then she’s crying.

She hasn’t cried in years. It feels good. Deep, body wracking sobs that are silent but painful. The kind of cry that is meant to cleanse and restart the body and mind. It’s a good cry.

Barry presses his forehead to hers, like he understands because he understands. Lup easily forgets how much Barry went through trying to fix everything, trying to pull their family back together and keep the world from falling apart, and she cries.

Barry grabs her hip to turn her towards him, guiding her face to rest against his neck and her leg to rest along his stomach. His thumb traces smooth circles right against her hip bone, and his free hand moves her hair out of her face, sliding his fingernail along her hairline. His hold is tight, warm, and grounding in a way that makes Lup ache to be held like this constantly, to never let go of Barry and let the world swallow them whole.

Lup stops crying eventually, feeling Barry’s heartbeat just below her ear and the rise and fall of his chest. She traces the shape of his collarbones with her fingers, eyes fixed on her own hands. Barry slides his hand through her hair again, and she closes her eyes, allowing herself to feel comforted by the small actions.

For the first time in several years, Lup feels safe. Relaxed. Content. For the first time in weeks, Lup eases into a dreamless sleep, held tightly in Barry’s capable arms and protected.

She wakes up to Barry still holding her, his eyes heavy lidded and lazy as he looks at her, love and affection written across his face. She leans up to kiss him, to say good morning, to say I love you. He shifts so it’s less strain on his back, and she ends up straddling his hips, comfortably set atop him like a blanket, and they relax back into bed.

“Good morning,” he whispers with his next kiss. She hums in response, feeling warmth from the sunlight streaming across the lower bed, and lazy in her drowsy state. Barry hitches his arm tight around her waist, and slides his thumb under her tank top, rubbing the knobs of her lower spine.

“Sleep okay?” He asks. She nods, and for once it’s true. Her skin doesn’t buzz, her mind is settled, and she lies half asleep in bed with Barry, in their small cottage in Goldcliff.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this as a comfort fic for myself, and I might return to it to add or edit later as I see fit. I hope this can help you in someway, or just give you those taz balance feels


End file.
